Thirty-Eight
ESSIE
I t’s starting to snow.
The property is more vast than I realized, and there’s a stark aridity in the air as I jog across the faded lawn, which is nearly blue under the night sky. The thin, dormant grass glitters with flecks of snowfall, and the moon is heavy overhead, ripe and white and tinged with the faint aura of clouds. The treehouse is a speck of gold in the distance.
A straight-line path transects the lawn, and I follow the pavers until I reach a clearing where the speck of gold has grown to a full beacon. The treehouse is bigger than I imagined, but it looks exactly like the ink on Dalton’s skin.
Inhaling deeply, I ascend the stairs and open the door.
Dalton looks up when I enter, and the confusion on his face quickly melts into concern. “You’re going to get cold,” is the first thing he says.
“It’s warm in here,” I remark, leaving out the part where I’m already freezing. I look around the sparse wooden space. There’s a small table and chair set, which Dalton clearly outgrew decades ago, and not much else beyond the light bulb in the center of the ceiling. “And there’s electricity?”
“Solar,” Dalton answers. “I had it installed last year. I figured my kids would play out here one day, and after spending hundreds of nights freezing my ass off, I wanted to make it nice.”
I lean against the door. He’s sitting on the floor with his back against the opposite wall, legs up, arms on his knees. The expression on his face looks…tired. I thought he would be restless after the fight in the dining room, but he’s not.
He looks devastated.
“How did you find me?” he finally asks.
Instead of responding, I flick the snap buttons on the front of my jacket, exposing the zipper. The sound of the metal teeth is audible in the small room, faint against the hot buzz of the lightbulb above us. When my jacket is undone, I slide it off and let it fall to the wooden floor.
I’m still wearing my dinner dress: another emerald green number Dalton bought for me. It’s tight with buttons in the front, and by the time I get to the third button, the one that exposes my breasts when I undo it, Dalton forces himself to look away.
But I keep going. The fourth button. The fifth. Sixth. Eventually, he looks at me again. His eyes are somber, deep pools of coffee and amber and black, and he takes in the stretch of skin I’ve exposed to him—and so much more.
“Baby.” His voice is pleading, tinged with a request for me to put him out of his misery.
I slip the dress off and I’m nearly naked. My stockings are thigh highs, and his eyes fix on the spot where the tops indent my skin, and one of his hands flexes.
“I seriously can’t—”
I step forward, keeping my stockings and my heels on. When he realizes I’m really going to stop there, his composure finally breaks.
“I will literally die right now if I have to look at you dressed like that without having you. I don’t know how, but I will legitimately die from heartache.”
Still silent, I kneel in the space between his knees, positioning myself directly in front of him. He looks down, but when I put my hand on his cheek, he connects our gazes.
A tear slips from the corner of his eye.
I’m so taken aback that I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen Dalton cry before. If I’m being honest, I didn’t know Dalton was capable of crying, but he’s looking right at me and making no effort to hide his pain.
“Essie,” he murmurs.
I press my lips against his before he can form the latter half of my name. I swallow the remaining letters, replacing them with the slide of my tongue. The kiss feels eternal, like it may never stop. In reality, it’s mere seconds.
I kiss his forehead. “I want you,” I tell him, and his arms stiffen under my touch. “Wait. Let me say this.” I roll back on my heels to see him better. “People look at me. I’ve made my money off of people looking at me, but hardly anybody sees me. You’ve always seen me though, haven’t you?”
“As much as you’ve allowed me to,” he replies, and the faint dew from a tear lingers on his eyelashes.
“No, you’ve always seen me. Even the parts I was afraid to accept, you saw—and you loved them.” I swallow, moving closer. “I want you,” I repeat. “And no matter what, I’m going to want you for a long, long time. Do you believe me? Do you believe me when I promise I want you more than anything?”
Dalton shuts his eyes and releases a labored breath through his nostrils. His expression remains stony, but his jaw eases. He dips his chin and blinks his eyes open. “I’ve wanted to hear you say this forever.”
“I know you have. Eight hundred thirty-one days,” I recite. “Or two years, three months, and eight days. Or nineteen thousand, nine hundred forty-four hours.”
The corner of his mouth rises. “Since the night we met.”
“Since the night we met,” I confirm.
He leans forward, touching our foreheads together. “I want you too,” he says, sighing. “It’s, like, the most painful thing ever—”
“The wedding is off.”
Dalton pulls back, crashing his brows together in a strained pinch. “What?”
“It’s over.”
“No. No. That’s not what I wanted,” he mutters, expression horrified. “I didn’t want to ruin this for Mom. I wanted her to—”
“Wait,” I interrupt, cradling his cheeks. “It’s okay. She’s actually really happy.”
“She is?”
I nod vigorously. “She even told me to find you and tell you.”
The look of relief passing over Dalton’s face touches every single one of his features. “Well, why the fuck didn’t you lead with that?” he questions loudly before he crushes his lips against mine.
And the kiss is unlike anything we’ve shared before. It’s teeth and tongue, the twining of our breath, a mutual devouring as we both open wide, and a rush to strip Dalton. Our hands fumble—we’re a complete mess—but at this point, it’s our standard.
Naked, Dalton hoists me in his arms and pins me against the wall. The wood is rough and unforgiving, bordering on uncomfortable, but I don’t care. I welcome it. I move and I grind, doing anything and everything to touch as much of his body as I can.
“ Fuck ,” he murmurs when he notches his cock at my entrance. “Look how creamy this pussy got while you were looking for your Daddy. Did you prep?”
I shake my head, but I know I can handle it. Even if the stretch hits my limit at first, I always adjust to him. “I need to feel the whole thing.”
He knows I can handle it too. “I love you,” he grits before he rolls his hips and sinks into me with slow, controlled movements. My body flares around him, spasming with the early signs of a climax simmering in my core.
“I want to feel it,” I encourage, wiggling against him, gasping against the harsh pull I feel every time I take this man. “I want you to stretch me. Do it hard, Daddy.”
Dalton’s fingers work my nipple while his other hand slides between us. His thumb finds my clit, and he massages. “You feel so fucking good,” he murmurs. “You’re going to feel me tomorrow.”
“I feel you every day,” I admit, groaning as the lusciousness of a rapid stroke blazes into relief, easing my tightly coiled muscles fighting the winter chill. “I love it. It makes me feel like yours.”
“Mine. Forever, Ess,” he grunts.
His strokes piston me, plunging so vigorously that I go breathless, and I need more—want more. He’s so much bigger than me, and I can’t always touch him the way I want when we make love. I miss his kiss, his tongue, the inimitable sensation of his muscles against my palms. But no matter what, I always have his voice—his words—the filthy, unfiltered candor Dalton gives like no other man.
“I want to fuck you forever,” he continues, emphasizing his point with a luscious swivel of his hips. “Just like this—every time. I can’t believe how beautiful you are. Do you know what it’s like to fuck into someone so goddamn beautiful?” He spins his thumb faster, working my clit into senselessness. “And the best pussy. The sweetest pussy I could find. Let me have it forever. Let me make it weep like this, drip like this. I could do it. I could keep you spread and sated for the rest of our lives.”
“Dalton—”
“Think of how I’d take you on a wedding night,” he goes on, thrusting so skillfully that I could come even if his hands weren’t on me. “Think of me saying ‘I do’ and then dragging you into the next room, working your nipples with my fingers in the bodice of your pretty dress while my thick cock makes you squirt on your white lace. Would you squirt for me, baby? Would you be loud and needy for cock even if hundreds of people could hear us?”
Oh god, I’m going to come embarrassingly quickly.
“I’d fuck my wife open. I’d make her sleep with my cock inside her. Will you be a good girl and warm Daddy’s cock at night?” He pushes on my clit, pinching it between the pads of his thick fingers. “There it is,” he murmurs, feeling my muscles clamp. “There it is. Look how my wife loves my cock.”
It’s either twisted or magnificent that the words ‘my wife’ make me erupt. Bliss radiates from the center of my core and out to the far reaches of my body. I scream, and I moan, and I squirt, gushing on his naked body, mingling my arousal with the cum he releases at the same time.
His spend is hot in my pussy, and there’s so much of it—and it drips —it drips out of me and onto Dalton’s muscled thighs. It splatters in fat droplets onto the floor of the treehouse.
Dalton pulls out too quickly, leaving me momentarily blindsided until he falls to his knees. Then he’s on all fours, licking my cum and his cum off the varnished wood floor, finding every drop and taking them with his tongue. His spanning back flexes with limitless planes of muscles as he swoops and licks, keeping one hand wrapped possessively around my ankle the entire time. Holy shit .
It’s filthy and mind-bogglingly moving to see the biggest and most impressive man I’ve ever known debase himself willingly—without me even asking him. My legs are unsteady from coming, but I tackle him, knocking him onto his back and slamming my lips against his.
“Essie,” Dalton groans against my mouth, and the way he says my name sounds like he’s been waiting years to pass the word from his throat into mine. I take it—the letters in my name, the cum on his tongue—and kiss him back.
Breathless, I roll onto my back, exhaling slowly and trying to level my heart rate.
But within a moment, Dalton’s face appears in my line of sight. He drops a tender kiss on my forehead before he pulls back, grins, and asks, “Who said you were done?” before he sheaths his cock inside me.
His thrusts force a crude squelch, a sound so carnal that it perfectly accompanies the groans and heaving breaths passing through our lips. I’m obsessed. I’m unraveling. My body is used and aching and so alive, caught up in the catastrophic whirlwind of the roughest and messiest encounter we’ve ever had.
It’s also the most poignant, the most resplendent, the most unmistakably honest moment we’ve ever shared.
He comes when I shove my fingers into his mouth, wrapping them across his bottom teeth and forcing his jaw open. I hold his face and beg for another load in me—two now—two deep deposits into my body.
And still I want more.
“Again.”
“Ess,” Dalton murmurs, flexing his jaw when I take my hand back. “Baby, you’ve been fucked twice tonight.”
It’s the first time he’s ever suggested I can’t take more, and the barest glimpse of doubt fuels my resolve.
“You came twice, but I have another,” I insist. “Work it out of me, Dalt, please. You’re the only one who can do it the way I like. Give me all of you.”
“More cock?”
“No,” I reply. “ All of you.” I slide my hand down his arm until it reaches the hand lackadaisically pushing his cum back into my pussy, and I feel his pulse throbbing under his skin.
“ Oh .”
I nod, never breaking eye contact. “I want as much of you as you’ll give me.”
“Okay,” he agrees, and his disbelief melts into determination. “I mean, of course. But sweetheart, I don’t have your lube—”
“I brought some—what? Stop smirking. I had a hunch.”
“You had a hunch I’d fist you?” he replies, chuckling as he waves the bottle he found in my pocket.
“That we’d consummate this,” I clarify—and the moment immediately loses its levity.
Dalton kneels in front of me again, and I guide his hand back to my pussy. He blinks, eyes locked on mine, and he inserts his fingers into me—four altogether. “It’s good you’re so wet and engorged already,” he mentions. “It’s good I made you squirt.”
“Have you done this before?” I reply, forcing myself to breathe out slowly.
“No, but I’ve been researching it for weeks. I’ve got this.” And right then—when he bites on his lip in focus—I know I’m going to marry this man one day.
We stay in this place, with Dalton working his four fingers in and out of me, adding lube and occasionally working the tip of this thumb in with his packed fingers. Again and again, he concentrates, never ceasing his motions.
Good girl. So good for me. Look how wet you get for Daddy. It helps that you squirted on yourself, so filthy and open and ready for me. Again and again, gentle but prying, working more and more into me. Pussy’s so good. This pussy makes me insane. Tell me I can worship it like this forever. Tell me I can fill it, breed it. Tell me it’s mine .
“It’s yours,” I murmur, body quivering and misted with sweat when he finally pushes past the jut of his palm. “I’m yours, Dalton.”
And there it is—his hand inside me. It aches, but there’s an inherent beauty behind the intensity of what we’re doing. I couldn’t do this with him in a mask—and I’m not sure he could either. He can see my face, and I can see his, and the connection allows us to join our bodies in a way we’ve never done before.
An act like this requires patience and diligence and vulnerability—things nobody would outright associate with Dalton—but I know this man. I know what he keeps behind his mask. Above all, I know this moment requires trust.
I’ve never trusted anybody more than him.
“I love you,” he murmurs, staring at the connection point between us, gaze heavy with admiration. “I think you were made for me.”
“I think so too,” I respond, swallowing hard right as a tear slips from the corner of my eye.
He kisses away my tear and moves his hand slowly. In and out, he rides the wave of my arousal, heightening the pressure and stimulating every nerve ending he can touch.
The fuck is characteristically brutal, and yet it’s the most reverential lovemaking I’ve ever experienced. He slaps my tits before nestling his face between them, grabbing a handful, and whispering, “ These belong to me. I can fuck them, bite them, and lick them whenever I feel like using them. But I need more. Let me fuck a baby into you and fill them up with milk,” while he drags his thumb over my swollen, sensitive nipples. “Let me take care of you.”
The intensity is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, but my body is thriving. It’s stretched and pulsating, and I can feel pleasure coursing through me, traveling the network of my nerves and shimmering on my skin in glitter and sensation. My senses are screaming, like the room is brighter and the rustle of the leaves outside is louder, and the coaxing words Dalton gives live in my ear, in my heart, in the places where nobody else has ever seen me or touched me.
This is only for him—and only for us.
My climax enters my life the way Dalton did: unexpectedly and severely and so messy—but remarkable. I gush around his hand, crying out and collapsing back onto the hardwood, shaking through the racks of sensation reverberating through me. The entire time, his hands are on me, caressing me, easing me.
And when my breathing is level, he holds me close like he’s afraid I’ll leave him.
I slide his cock back into my well-fucked pussy, and he relaxes at once.
And gradually, safe from the snowfall and the bitter chill outside, we fall asleep together, wrapped in each other’s arms, on the floor of the treehouse.